HONG KONG announced a two-week ban on incoming flights from eight countries yesterday and decided to tighten local COVID-19 restrictions as authorities feared a fifth wave of coronavirus in the city.

The latest restrictions were announced as health authorities scoured the city for the contacts of a COVID-19 patient, some of whom had been aboard a Royal Caribbean ship that was ordered to cut short its “cruise to nowhere” and return to port.

Incoming flights from Australia, Canada, France, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Britain and the United States, including interchanges, will be banned between Jan. 8 and 21, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam told reporters yesterday.

Lam said the government will ban indoor dining from 6 p.m. Friday and close swimming pools, sports centers, bars and clubs, museums and other venues for at least two weeks. Future cruise journeys will be canceled.

But in-person classes at schools would not be suspended “for the time being … for the benefits and the interests of the children and parents,” Lam said.

“We are facing a very dire situation of a major community outbreak anytime. And that’s why we have to take very decisive measures,” Lam told a press conference.

“We’re yet to see a fifth wave yet, but we’re on the verge,” she said.

A streak of three months without community cases was ended

Dec. 30 with the first local transmission of the new Omicron variant.

Since then, authorities have scrambled to track down and test hundreds of people who had been in contact with a handful of Omicron patients. One patient, however, had no known links, raising fears of a large outbreak.

The latest contact tracing campaign was sparked by a patient who danced with some 20 friends in a central park on New Year’s Eve. Two of the fellow dancers, one of whom was a domestic helper, came up positive in preliminary tests.

The helper’s employer and eight other of her close contacts then went on a cruise journey Jan. 2.

As part of its coronavirus restrictions, Hong Kong has restricted cruises to short trips in nearby waters, with ships asked to operate at reduced capacity and to only allow vaccinated passengers who test negative for the virus.

The “Spectrum of the Seas” ship, which returned a day early, had about 2,500 passengers and 1,200 staff on board. The nine close contact passengers were isolated from the rest of the people on board and preliminary tests taken during the journey returned negative results, authorities said.

“‘Spectrum of the Seas’ is taking appropriate measures under guidelines by the city’s Department of Health,” Royal Caribbean said in a statement.

Hong Kong on Tuesday reported 39 new cases of COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, taking the total tally to 12,761, data from the Center for Health Protection showed.

Since Jan. 1, Hong Kong has recorded 71 asymptomatic cases.

Since the launch of a mass inoculation program in February 2021, about 4.92 million people, or 73.2 percent of the eligible population, have taken at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, while about 4.68 million, or 69.5 percent of the eligible population, have taken two doses. (SD-Agencies)